The Ministry of Energy is developing measures to tackle illegal electricity connections in the country, the Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu has said.

According to him, Ghana loses millions of cedis monthly through illegal connections and other activities.

At a meeting with officials of the Northern Electricity Distribution Company, NEDCO, in Tamale, Mr. Amewu called on the management to collaborate with the ministry to smoke out officers of the company who aid consumers to engage in the act.

“So of course, if you are a district manager and you find out that in your district there is power theft happening, we cannot leave you also alone. You need to be held responsible.”

“The level of penalty of this law is not deterring at all. So I can assure you that we’ve started reviewing that regulation so that the punishment will be deterrent enough for people who are caught in power theft”, he stressed.

Tema: 96,000 homes cited for illegal electricity connections in 2017

In March 2018, the manager in charge of revenue protection at the Tema Regional office of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Madam Cynthia Kyei Gyamfi disclosed that about 96, 000 houses within Tema engaged in various forms of illegal connection last year.

She added that within the same period 97 customers were prosecuted and billed to pay for the power that had been stolen.

Madam Kyei Gyamfi noted that the most prevalent recorded cases involved meter bypassing and meter tampering.

She said the company was able to recover about six million Ghana cedis out of about nine million one hundred and sixty-eight thousand that had been lost.

She said the level of illegal siphoning of power was realized when the company last year organized a routine house-to-house operation to check on its meters within some parts of the Tema region.

According to her, the exercise formed part of efforts to ensure that customers pay for the power they use and are deterred from stealing power.

She said “a report was currently being compiled by the headquarters to come out with a few issues and then we can bounce back to begin the next phase of the operation”

Madam Kyei Gyamfi added that customers who have been found culpable have been given time to pay their bills.

“The bills are such that customers don’t pay them at a go. It is not a mainstream billing so those who are found culpable are given a payment plan to settle their bills”